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Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

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521–530 of 729 posts

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#521

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So weird reading this from the transatlantic sidelines, where noone cares one little bit what device a message was sent from.

I live in America and literally nobody I know cares about this. Unfortunately I think it's just the typical remnant of the old Mac vs Windows haters who come out of the woodwork online to make it sound like a problem.

I care. It's fucking annoying when someone joins a group chat on Android and all of a sudden I can no longer access it from my computer, iPad or over WiFi.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#522

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> No one can make their own app Google did, Apple will, what stops other companies from doing it aside from effort and money ? > and there's barely any carrier adoption Expecting carriers to do adopt new technologies is usually a losing bet.

See the parent comment.

Parent comments is positing that only Google can do it with no specific argument on why it would be so. For instance, why would Samsung be barred from doing it ? What about Nothing ? Xiaomi ?

The "monopoly" argument feels like vague hand waiving to me. It's probably a complex and costly situation, but nothing close to why we don't have different browser engines on iOS for instance.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#523
post #503

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Apple also stated they would work to add encryption to the RCS spec, poking Google in the eye with their proprietary model. Of course this might not ever happen, but it's still fun to see big companies taking jabs at each other.

When elephants fight, the grass suffers.

When companies compete, consumers win.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#524
post #508
post #504

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And this is, honestly, a pretty reasonable default. For the average person, the failure mode is "I lost my phone, and I can't remember my iCloud password", not "I really need the cops to not be able to get into my backup", and they'd be super pissed off if Apple couldn't get them their data back. Having good security be available, but not the default, and requiring you to acknowledge the risks is a sensible trade-off…

I kinda agree with you, but I think there's also a reasonable argument to be made around the idea that a user might be super pissed off that Apple made the default be not secure against state actors. Also, how many people actually care all that much about their message history? I know I do (and I have 1GB of SMS/MMS/RCS message history dating back to 2010 that I back up to GDrive nightly), but it seems to me that mos…

I'll grant that what people really care about is their backed up photos, and there's nothing stopping Apple from having separate security strategies there.

That said, I suspect that there's more people out there who're going to lose their text history with their dead parent and be distraught over that, than who're going to be actively upset that the state can subpoena their messages.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#525
post #94

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Both iMessage and Webkit have to accept requests from unknown sources that can contain a wide variety of content type. some other content types, like EPS are themselves programming languages that could contain infiltration scripts. That is why Apple has dropped EPS support. Similar situation can happen for other kinds of image and video content. I don't know much about how iMessage communication is implemented but it…

I just laugh because Signal is way better than all of this and—wouldn't ya know—the default is "blue bubbles". They are the ultimate blue bubble to me because its almost all yours and gives you way more control than anything else like iMessage and its all audited and open for examination (theoretically)

Signal can be better in all ways except the one that matters most. Not a single person I communicate with uses it. So it's useless.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#526

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That's the trap door in this. Apple is going to implement RCS exactly as the specification says it should be implemented, no more or no less. Any incompatibilities with Android will be laid at Google's door to resolve. Having beaten Apple with the RCS stick for the last year, Google might find themselves now getting beaten back.

If RCS doesn’t get E2E encryption added to the public spec, they should highlight unencrypted messages with an even more offensive yellow bubble.

Unencrypted RCS messages will be rendered in Comic Sans.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#527

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This could possibly open an avenue for another party to show up around this. Google de facto having reign on this is because they're the only company in this space that cared enough about it to get it moving. Apple supporting RCS could create enough interest that it breaks their de facto control of the standard

Yes maybe. While I understand Google's frustration, the number of carriers that implemented Universal Profile independently was not zero though, and in the end it was for nothing. I know from a friend that Facebook was looking into integrating RCS to Messenger (not Whatsapp somehow) and willing to be part of the Google federated RCS network, that also fell through, but I don't why.

What would that look like? Do you mean having Messenger be the default SMS app for your phone, and having it able to receive RCS? If so, these restrictions in Android would stop it: https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/ims-single-regi...

I've been trying to gain some insight on why Google is not making it easy (possible?) to implement a third-party RCS app for Android and was reading about these APIs (clearly intended for OEMs).

> This means that third party apps aren't allowed to access RCS single registration APIs as they require carrier certification on the device.

Could just be Google passing the buck here, but this does sound like something the carriers would do, if given the chance.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#528
post #270
post #240

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> That layer is offered by Google itself > Not sure if Apple is going to interoperate with it. Only if both users in a 1:1 chat are using Google Messages. E2EE is not possible even with Samsung Messages, so I highly doubt it.

Wait so google doesn’t support e2ee for more than two devices in a chat?

Yes, it does, as long as everyone is using RCS via Google Messages.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#529

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There's no one to block, you just won't be included when the groupchat is setup. Big problem for teens.

I dunno. Sounds like being left out of those groups is a net positive.

Yeah it kinda makes me want to get my kids Android phones.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#530

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If you turn off RCS, Google Messages shows you a full screen prompt once a week to turn it back on. Indefinitely. And of course the prompt has a large blue button to enable, and a very small text underneath to dismiss, making it easy to accidentally enable it. It happened to me a few times already. It also tells you nothing about the downsides (that you need a data connection, mainly) that would make RCS unusable to…

The problem with developers is that we are often isolated from whole sections of the world. The people on the Android team, probably working in SF, have perhaps never been into the hood. Out here there are guys on every street corner stood next to the drug dealers (often it's the same guy) trying to get you to take a free smartphone or a tablet. They get paid some sort of kickback if they can get you to take it -- it…

> and an average web page can easily run to 200MB now

Wait, what? How did it come to that? I thought it was more like 50 MB if not even less. Thank God we have ad blockers.

> guys on every street corner trying to get you to take a free smartphone or a tablet with 15GB of data a month

Would it be possible to get it as a tourist?

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